I would not ED anywhere if I were you. You are a PHENOMENAL student!!! Congratulations on all your hard work and accomplishments! But your issue is cost, and your focus during this admissions process needs to be cost. With your parents’ income of $150,000, you are not going to find many schools with a price tag of $5,000 - $10,000. If were you, I would do three things right now:
- Forget ED.
- Make a list (perhaps with CC’s help) of schools that might give you a full ride (since that’s essentially what you need). These schools will be a tier or so lower from the reaches you are considering, but you need to focus on schools you will actually be able to afford to attend.
- Have another discussion with your parents about cost. Have them open up school webpages and run the NPC’s themselves. Have them look at student federal loan limits. If a low-income family truly only has $5,000 to contribute to a child’s education, that’s completely fine! And if a high-income family chooses not to contribute (much) to their child’s education because they have a value system that says kids should find a way to pay for college on their own and make their own way in the world, that’s completely fine too! But from what you’ve written, this doesn’t describe your family. Your family makes a comfortable income and is choosing not to help you pay for college because of… a mortgage? Did they do zero college savings in the past 18 years? Are they saying they really can’t afford $15,000 per year (making them survive on $135,000 per year for 4 years)? That number plus $5,000 in loans would put many more schools in reach. Something doesn’t add up here. Either you don’t fully understand your family’s financial situation (which I suspect may be the case) or your parents don’t fully understand the current costs of attending college. Either way, you need to sit down and talk with your parents. Good luck!